Patrice Rankine (University of Richmond): ‘Touching the Body: some observations on rights, punishment, and justice, with reference to Prometheus, Emmett Till, and George Floyd’

Patrice Rankine will give the online 2021 Morse Lecture at Bristol University’s Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition on Thursday 4 March, 5pm (UTC). Register here, and find more information here.

This paper’s literary focal point is James Baldwin’s 1964 play, Blues for Mister Charlie, which adapts the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till for the stage. As a courtroom drama concerned with rights, punishment, and justice, the play is an example of enduring classical themes, even in the absence of evidence of direct classical reception. Even though it does not make any direct reference or allusion to Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Prometheus, or any of the ancient texts on justice (e.g., Homer, Plato, Aristotle), Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie asks classic questions about race and punishment in America that endure into the 21st century, the killing of George Floyd a chilling coda to the past century.